


For the Good of the Team

by Mireille



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-01
Updated: 2005-06-01
Packaged: 2018-08-16 19:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8115298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: In all the time Marcus Flint had been at Hogwarts, Slytherin had never lost the Quidditch Cup. He wasn't about to make this the year they finally did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written before the publication of HBP.

Marcus Flint sat by the fire in the Slytherin common room, scribbling Quidditch plays, frowning at them for a few moments, and throwing the crumpled parchment into the fire before starting the entire process again. He was beginning to think there was no point, though, because none of his plans were going to work. Nothing was going to fucking work.

Gryffindor had lost to Hufflepuff, and they still had a chance to win the Quidditch Cup if they beat Slytherin by a large enough margin. And try as he might, Marcus couldn't figure out a way to guarantee that wouldn't happen.

Their Keeper was better than Bletchley, there was no fucking doubt about that, and Wood had several years' experience on Miles, as well. Their Beaters, in his opinion, weren't quite a match for Bole and Derrick--they weren't as strong, for one thing--but they were still good. The Gryffindor Chasers weren't better as individual players, but they worked together better as a team than the Slytherins did, because just fucking try to get teamwork out of Graham fucking Montague.

And aside from all that, the Gryffindors had Potter, and Malfoy couldn't even come close.

In all the time Marcus had been at Hogwarts, Slytherin had never lost the Quidditch Cup. This was his last year--no matter what happened with his NEWTs this time, he wasn't coming back--and he wasn't about to make this the year they finally did.

The only problem was that he couldn't actually see a way to avoid it. He couldn't even hope to out-strategize Wood, not without getting an illegal Time-Turner, going back about ten years, and forcing his younger self to completely give his life over to Quidditch. Not even maintaining Slytherin's winning streak seemed worth the sort of sacrifice required to become a maniac with no life away from the pitch. The world really only needed one Oliver Wood, and even that was debatable.

It was starting to look as though the only real option was to knock the fucking pansies off their brooms, and even that had its drawbacks. Not that Marcus objected to it on moral grounds, of course; Quidditch, in his opinion, was no place for someone who didn't mind a little bloodshed... or a lot of it, for that matter. Slytherin Quidditch certainly wasn't; his first captain, who'd been a Beater, had had as his ambition for his seventh year to commit more fouls than the more aggressive of the Beaters for the Falmouth Falcons. He hadn't quite made it, but he had committed more than the other Falmouth Beater and both of the reserves, so the season couldn't be counted as a total failure.

No, the question of whether it was wrong to leave the Gryffindor Quidditch team lying bleeding on the grass at the end of the match didn't even enter into Marcus's mind--nor did the possibility of the Gryffindors taking revenge on them after the season was over. They were Gryffindors, for fuck's sake; if they had any notion of how to exact proper vengeance, they'd have been put in Slytherin in the first place.

The only thing that concerned Marcus at this point was whether or not they could actually manage to do it.

Potter should be no problem, he thought. He was only a third year, and not an especially big one; one well-placed Bludger, or Bole's bat to the side of his head, ought to take care of him. That gave Malfoy plenty of time to concentrate on finding the Snitch.

Everyone else, though, was going to be a bit more difficult. Wood was nearly the same size as Marcus himself, and fucking solid--Marcus had punched him more than once over the years, and knew for a fact that Oliver Wood's stomach had approximately the same yielding nature as one of the castle walls. The Weasley twins were smaller, but fairly strong, armed with Beaters' bats, and very willing to punch Slytherins in the face if they thought they could get away with it.

Even the Chasers, even though they were girls, were strong and fast--Wood's training regimen saw to that. They were tough, too; Angelina Johnson had bit Pucey once, when they were first years and he'd made some Hufflepuff brat cry--Pucey still had the half-moon scars on his wrist from her teeth.

It wouldn't be impossible, obviously, but difficult. It wasn't as though they could find each Gryffindor individually and beat the hell out of them; that'd be too obvious. Marcus himself would be fine, of course, and he wasn't worried about the Beaters, either. Bole and Derrick were bigger than Marcus and twice as vicious--if they hadn't been so completely fucking stupid, he'd have been impressed by them--so they'd be more than "fine," they'd be essential to the success of his plan

They were stuck with Malfoy, unfortunately, but he could just stay the fuck out of the way and get the Snitch while everyone else was occupied. And Montague wasn't especially tall, but his arms were as big around as one of the Weasley twins' thighs, and he could more than take care of himself.

That just left Bletchley and Pucey, both of whom were utterly useless weeds. They could play Quidditch well enough--but they both tended toward the "skinny and stringy" end of the physical spectrum, and... well, fuck. Angelina Johnson had bit Pucey hard enough to leave a scar, and it didn't matter if it was four fucking years ago, there was absolutely no excuse for the bitch still having all her teeth, if you asked Marcus.

So something had to be done about them. Madam Hooch was still furious with Marcus after he'd got her to reschedule their first match, so there was no point going to her about using players from the reserve side without a very good reason--and he suspected that she wouldn't think "so we can beat the hell out of the Gryffindors" was a good enough reason, although he was sure Snape would approve of it.

The only reason he thought she'd accept would be injuries--and they'd have to be serious enough that she wouldn't accuse them of faking it, something serious enough that Madam Pomfrey would insist that they couldn't play Quidditch on Saturday. That would definitely improve Slytherin's chances. The reserve Chasers had the speed and agility of a trio of bricks, but one of them, Warrington, was built like a young dragon, with the aggression to match. The reserve Keeper only stopped the Quaffle about once a month, but before Christmas, he'd broken someone's arm because they brushed against him as they walked past in a crowded hallway. They'd be perfect for what Marcus wanted to do.

Marcus crumpled up his last few sheets of parchment and tossed them into the fire, grinning to himself. He wouldn't be needing them, not at all.

When, the next morning, Adrian Pucey was found to have fallen down the stairs in the night and given himself a fairly serious head injury, and that afternoon, Miles Bletchley tripped over something while in the owlery and pitched himself straight out the window, cracking his backbone and breaking both his legs, everyone at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall started worrying about their chances on Saturday.

Madam Hooch called Marcus in to her office the day afterward, scowling at him as she told him that Pomfrey absolutely refused to consider letting either Pucey or Bletchley play Quidditch that weekend. Marcus had sighed, saying that luckily, he did have reserves for both those positions--unlike at Seeker--and that he supposed they'd just have to do the best they could. Not even Hooch could argue with that, not really, and so after several dire warnings about the consequences of foul play, she let him go.

Once her office door closed behind him, Marcus broke into a grin. Not even the thought that Bletchley and Pucey would be released from the hospital wing eventually could spoil his mood.

He doubted they'd cause much trouble, anyway. After all, it had all been for the benefit of the House (and the misfortune of the Gryffindors), hadn't it, and how could a good Slytherin object to that?


End file.
